Much bound, printed material such as technical manuals, catalogs, price lists and the like are issued in looseleaf form or bound form and thus, in addition to trimming and binding, require accurately placed binding holes along one marginal area. Heretofore, this requirement has been fulfilled by utilizing a manually operated drilling station for drilling the required holes, the station being set up separate from the primary flow of the output of binding machinery such as a conventional stitcher-binder. The prior art drilling apparatus was not integrated into the production line output of the binding machinery and thus added an appreciable increment to the time for job completion and to the labor cost of the completed job.
The apparatus of the present invention automatically positions and punches the bound stacks of pages as they are sequentially completed by the binding apparatus. Since it is mounted on rolling casters the punching apparatus can easily be placed in or taken out of the flow of bound material from the printing, trimming and binding apparatus. The use of a front stop or abutment for sequentially positioning the bound stacks to be punched and use of a member for immobilizing the conveyor feed during the punching stroke, the movement of the abutment and of the belt feed control member being synchronized with the punching stroke enables the apparatus to accommodate the output of relatively rapid, automatic stitcher-binder machinery. Use of a simplified joined punch and die assembly in the apparatus eliminates set-up errors and adds to the ability of the apparatus to accurately perform the punching operation in rapidly moving production lines.